Rain the day before had cleansed the southern basin of the Bay Area, washing away the haze to deliver a lucent view from a high point over Cupertino. On Monday morning, the unPTO hiking club for the unemployed or recently laid off was banded together. When the hikers reached the summit of Maisie’s Peak, to soak in the valley below, a pinch of irony came into plain view.
Companies in Silicon Valley had let many of them go. It’s put them in a wringer. They’re jobless among thousands of other similarly skilled workers, all released into a congested job market in the waves of layoffs that have rocked the Bay Area in recent years. However, on Monday, the hiking club with unlimited part-time off was taking the high road. While others in the valley below were stuck at desks indoors, 26 ramblers were building a community in morning light.
Most of them had never met until the hike. They swapped favorite routes for a bicycle ride out of San Francisco and debated the trustworthiness of people wearing tinted glasses. Twice on the descent, the single-file line came to a gradual halt so each person could admire a turtle in the Stevens Creek Reservoir or an olive green banana slug sliding down the Tony Look trail.
Occasionally, conversations turned to work: past employment and future hopes. The group members leaned on each other’s networks and offered sympathetic ears for horror stories, like a recent job interview where the hiring manager showed up 15 minutes late and didn’t even read the applicant’s resume…